Cases of officials gaming China's strict residence registration system for property-buying sprees prompt public backlash.

A public security official in southern China purchased 192 properties with the help of a fake identification card, state media reported.

Zhao Haibin, a high-level Communist party official in Lufeng city's public security bureau, was exposed online for alleged excessive property buying by a local multimillionaire amid a business dispute. Zhao claimed the properties belonged to his brother, but admitted to forging an identification card.

Identity fraud has become a recurring theme in property scandals after a senior executive at a bank in Shaanxi province was outed last month for purchasing 41 properties with fake residence registration permits, called hukou in Mandarin.

China's new leader Xi Jinping has embarked on a high-profile anti-corruption crackdown since he took the reins of the Communist party in the autumn.

"This kind of story, it underscores the fact that it's very hard to know how much property people have," said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a Chinese politics expert at Hong Kong Baptist University. "Because usually what they've done is to register the properties under relatives' names, friends' names and companies' names, so it's a real maze, and it's hard for the authorities to really pare down this kind of practice."

Internet users nicknamed Gong "House Elder Sister" and Zhao "House Grandpa", a play on the netizen-dubbed "Uncle House" – a 59-year-old Guangdong official who made headlines last autumn for owning 22 properties despite his meagre government salary.

"There are practical, logical and symbolic reasons" for the major public backlash against these cases, said Cabestan. "For a long time Chinese people didn't have access to property, it was a dream."

Furthermore, massive property investments by corrupt officials have contributed to a spike in housing prices, making even modest apartments unaffordable for ordinary people. "For young couples, it's getting very hard – it's impossible without their parents' help to buy property," he said. "This is contributing to widening [China's] social gap."

(Read by Brian Salter. Brian Salter is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Guardian)